Typically during the manufacturing of coating compositions, such as flake containing automotive OEM or refinish paints, from time to time, an aliquot of such coating compositions being manufactured is taken, applied as a layer of desired thickness over a test substrate, dried and/or cured into a coating and it's flop measured to check for the distribution of coarse flakes in the coating. The process parameters are then adjusted and the aforedescribed testing procedure is repeated until the adjusted coating composition meets the desired coarse flake distribution requirements.
The aforementioned testing procedure is not only time consuming and cumbersome but it also results in frequent interruptions in the manufacturing process. As a result, the batch-to-batch quality of the resulting coating compositions can be detrimentally affected. Therefore, a need exists to develop a device that could predict the distribution of coarse flakes in a coating that would result from a coating composition while it is still being manufactured such that the manufacturing process could be readily adjusted on a real time basis to get the desired flake distribution.